Mustang

89/100

I love this movie. I admire the way Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s camera lives so easily among these girls, neither sexualizing nor demonizing their bodies. I appreciate the reality of the oppression it portrays and the urgency of pushing back against it. But most of all I’m jazzed by the way it shrugs off the trappings of a grim or straight-laced social justice pic and instead adopts some of the conventions of genre movies (I couldn’t believe I was thinking about Night of the Living Dead during this) to engender feelings of despair, excitement and — in the end — hope. God knows it has its flaws, but I think I love them, too.